Congressional candidates debate Thursday in Ukiah

Mendocino County's Congressional forum for the June 5 primary takes place Thursday night in Ukiah, with 10 of the 12 certified candidates for the new District 2 participating.

The forum, starting at 6 p.m. at the Ukiah City Council chambers, is sponsored by the American Association of University Women, the National Women's Political Caucus, and the Ukiah Daily Journal. UDJ Editor K.C. Meadows will act as moderator.

Those who can't attend can hear or watch the forum via radio, cable TV or the Internet. KZYX Radio, 91.5 FM in Willits, will broadcast the forum live, as will Mendocino Access TV, cable channel 65. Mendocino Access also will stream the forum at its website, www.mendocinoaccess.org and post the video for later viewing.

The AAUW's flyer says: "The candidates are new. The district is new. Meet them. Hear them. Make your choice."

"Yes, it's going to be interesting," said the AAUW's Mary Ann Villwock, who's been one of the group working on this event all year. "It's really a brand-new district; it's been completely reconfigured. And this election will be the first under California's new open primary rules."

Villwock said due to the large number of candidates participating, there won't be questions taken from the audience Thursday night, although sponsors have solicited advance questions from their members. "Each candidate will get the chance to answer each question," Villwock said, "but K.C. will encourage the candidates to use their time to point out positions in which they differ from other candidates."

The new District 2 now stretches along the coast from Marin County to the Oregon border. The top two finishers in the June primary will advance to the November election, regardless of party affiliation. Third-party voters will not see their Green Party or Peace and Freedom Party or American Independent Party candidates on the November ballot, unless one of them comes in first or second in the June primary.

Some Willits residents have already received their sample ballots this week, and the first day for early voting is Monday, May 7.

The League of Women Voters of Mendocino County has published an extensive list of questions and answers from all the congressional candidates in an "Election Extra" edition of the The Voter newsletter. The newsletter can be accessed online at www.mendo.ca.lwvnet.org/files/voter_may_2012_election_extra.pdf.

Some recent news from the campaign trail includes a Friday endorsement for Stacey Lawson from the Mendocino County Farm Bureau. In a press release, local Farm Bureau President Mike Anderson said: "Stacey has leadership skills, real-life experience and a fresh perspective to take to Washington." The Sonoma County Farm Bureau endorsed Lawson two weeks ago.

Lawson's perspective has drawn some criticism in the last couple of weeks, after an anonymous website called "Who Is Stacy Lawson?" began drawing attention to her series of blog posts on the liberal website Huffington Post between 2007 and 2009. Many of Lawson's posts were about her study under her guru, Dattreya Siva Baba, aka Dr. Baskaran Pillai.

Although the blog posts have been deleted from Huffington Post, at least two?one entitled "We Are The Terrorists," and another, "What It Means To Delete Everything And Start Over"?are still available, one in part and one in full, elsewhere on the web.

A new internal poll by the Norman Solomon campaign of 500 district residents likely to vote in the June primary shows 47 percent of those polled are still undecided, a high number this late in the campaign. The new poll shows Assemblyman Huffman in the lead, as all the district polling so far has shown, with 18 percent. The poll has Solomon in second place with 10 percent, Marin County Supervisor Susan Adams in third place with 8 percent, and Lawson in fourth place with 5 percent. All remaining candidates, including the two Republicans, garnered 3 percent or less.

Huffman's recent endorsements include the North Bay Leadership Council, "a coalition of leading employers in Marin, Sonoma and Napa counties," and the California Small Business Association, "a nonpartisan group that represents over 203,000 California small business owners."

The Sierra Club announced a dual endorsement two weeks ago, endorsing both Huffman and Marin County Supervisor Susan Adams.